Sermons on God's mission

Though we may find grief is at our core, often it is unchecked assumptions about how life should be, or our childhood beliefs about what is right and wrong, or our privileged status, or the way we expect our lives to turn out, or our own agenda. Regardless, it asks us to join with God to build a life larger than that within us which can consume our lives.

I used to think that when we feel the absence of life as it had been, or when the world we know comes tumbling down, or when we were enveloped by a cloud of disorientation or disbelief, God then showed up and responded by ushering us into a new life, by meeting us in that place of deconstruction, of chaos and disorder, in order to reconstruct or re-order our lives into something more whole and true. I still do believe God meets us in the place of letting go of what we knew before, but I have come to understand that God is also the force that pulls at the seam of the reality we have constructed in order to keep us on that ever-moving path of renewed life, which is one way to witness to Jesus’ resurrection.

Our gospel story contains an invitation to trust that when we do bear fruit into the kingdom, when we do treasure what we have found to bring us joy, when we have met the needs of others, even if others don’t carry it forward, or value it as we do or did, we can trust that God does. When we live into the mission of God, and we tirelessly give of ourselves in creating whatever it is, a family, a ministry, a sense of hope within a community, we take our best step forward, and then leave the rest with God.